Product Description

A realistic guide to day trading today’s stock market

"Josh does an outstanding job of capturing all his trading experience into an invaluable memoir detailing specific rules for both the inexperienced and experienced trader. Anyone interested in trading professionally should read this book as they will learn invaluable lessons."
—Stephen Ehrlich, CEO, Lightspeed Financial, LLC

"Having been a trader for over twenty years myself, I’ve read my share of books about the financial markets. Josh’s book is one of the few which doesn’t sugarcoat the fact that successful trading is both hard work and takes a long time to master. These lessons and guidance are drawn from real-life experiences, not hypotheticals, which simply adds to their weight. Active traders who are serious about their success need to read this book."
—Tim Knight , founder of Prophet.net, author of Chart Your Way to Profits

"A brutally honest depiction of the reality of trading. Great stuff. If you’re new to the trading game, this book will shorten your learning curve and—if you take its lessons to heart—it just might save you money and grief."
—Jason Alan Jankovsky, author of The Art of the Trade and Trading Rules that Work

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22830 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470448489
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"DiPietro gives an insight int to what it takes to become a day trader. And he should know..." (City A.M. July 27th 2009)

From the Inside Flap
In terms of the potential for heavy financial loses, day trading is a high-risk profession. No one should contemplate day trading without giving thought to the ways he can lose, and all the ways to lessen or avoid them. Yet many people enter the game with unrealistic expectations, unaware of what it takes to succeed. Seminars and software alone do not make a successful day trader, cautions author Josh DiPietro. Instead, a trader must learn hard lessons of self-discipline, consistency, and staying in the game for the long haul to have a real chance of success. In The Truth About Day Trading Stocks, DiPietro offers the amateur day trader a brutally honest look at the pitfalls of day trading—and how to hopefully avoid them.

Written in an engaging and sometimes humorous tone, The Truth About Day Trading Stocks draws on the author’s own experiences as a day trader to offer a clear-cut departure from typical "golden goose" strategies promising instant wealth. Instead, he attempts to slow down the dangerous fervor of the average amateur and demonstrate the ways you can become a professional and not lose your shirt in the process. The Truth About Day Trading Stocks shows how trading decisions are bent and shaped by emotions, and why it is critical to know yourself, understand risk, and remember that increasing your skill level is a gradual, ongoing process—there’s always more to learn! After dispensing with popular illusions, DiPietro proceeds to offer realistic, practical trading advice—comparing pay-per-trade with pay-per-share brokers, determining which works best and when, offering suggestions on how to avoid the prospect of perfect trades turning ugly, and more. At the end of the book, he also includes a section called "Rules to Remember," a list of over eighty rules, simply stated and easy to grasp, to benefit amateurs’ performance.

Throughout the book, the author describes his development of acute self-awareness while figuring out how to succeed. Through that blunt self-portrayal, the goal of The Truth About Day Trading Stocks is to help you create a disciplined mind-set and apply it to your own successful trading style.

About the Author
JOSH DIPIETRO has been day trading stocks for ten years. He operates a web site (www.daytraderjosh.com) and provides training programs for aspiring day traders. DiPietro's trading approach involves making many trades every day, taking small profits, exiting losing trades quickly, and minimizing transaction costs. He is a critic of the educational paths offered by the established trading industry and is dedicated to providing an alternative educational approach for aspiring traders.

Customer Reviews

The real story of being a day trader
If you are searching around on Amazon for a book that will get you started in day trading, this is it. Josh DiPietro will give you the straight truth about the reality of being a day trader. It is a career choice like any other. It takes hard work to become successful. Almost every beginning trader blows out their account before learning to manage risk. You can read books and take seminars but only real trading will make you successful. I have been a trader for over 6 years and I agree completely with these observations from the author.
Josh's key points are to start with 100 share blocks only, to limit exposure and build skill. Do not move above this amount until you have been successful for months, then only increase trade size very gradually. You can make money trading 100 shares at a time through out the day. This also keeps your emotions under control when no one trade has to much riding on it. Use preset stop losses if your trade goes against you. Most amateurs make the mistake of stubbornly holding losing positions or even increase their position on the way down, this can be disastrous. The key to day trading success is consistency, making the money you need daily, by having a great win ratio.
Josh's system is scalping .20 cents to .40 cents off nice steady consumer staple stocks that trade at least a million shares daily on the market. He uses the previous days support and resistance levels as a trading range along with volume. His trading seems to be primarily counter trend, shorting at break outs to new highs and going long at support to try to catch retracements to profit. I have used this system in range bound markets for much success. So I can say his system is sound from my personal experience. He also wants to avoid stocks if they are in the news or earnings are expected, because that will disrupt the range and lead to volatility and trends.
He also explains the value of using pay per share brokers versus pay per trade brokers. If you qualify for an account with a pay per share firm you could get 10 to 1 or even 20 to 1 leverage. This is for the advanced and you must show them your ability to trade before they will release that much buying power to you. But it enables you to be profitable with $10 and $20 scalps because a 100 share trade is about .35 cents. This is an opportunity amateurs rarely hear about.
I have read over a hundred trading books and day traded successfully through this recent financial crises, with a 31% return from September 2008 to July 2009. I also was one of the rare people who went to a cash position in my 401K on January 5th of 2008. With my background I still learned several things from this book and it was great to get my mind focused during this break from trading. I highly recommend for all beginning and intermediate traders. I wish I would have had this book when I started day trading it would have saved me both money and time.

Fresh trading perspective!
I've been trading for about a year and I've had wonderful highs but fewer mistakes that create larger lows. I've spent $4,500 for classes in Chicago & NYC. The classes attempt to teach me the trading equivalent of driving a golf ball 350 yards, or trading a stock that moves a clean 1 1/2 points. I can't hit a golf ball 350 yards & I can't find a 1 1/2 point move but I can chip and putt both on the greens and in the markets. I discovered Josh in a article in SFO (Stock, Futures and Options) magazine. Josh is not a professional national speaker with his head in the clouds. Josh is more like you and me yet has much to offer. His book tells how to get 25 cents many times, trading psychology (OMG), how to select stocks, manage risks and much more. I put myself on probation as I tend to have many gains but a few larger losses. Sounds like a simple thing to fix but welcome to emotions and money. In my 90 minutes of trading today after reading this book I netted $115. For me, that is good. Certainly go to the conferences and read other books but if want the opinion of a young guy that is more like us, Josh's book is a must.

He Holds back no punches.....
"The Truth" is most definitely what this book is all about. I have been a struggling online day trader for about four years now. The stock market has been a complete nightmare for me. I have been reading a lot of books lately, and The Truth About Day Trading Stocks has been the one that stands out the most. Josh DiPietro really knows the hard side of day trading stocks. I feel like he is in the trenches with all of us amateurs. His advice is straight-up, he holds no punches. If you are looking for a book that is gunna show you how to make loads of money with some proprietary trading strategy, then this is not the book. Josh purposefully sways from giving the "golden goose" of strategies that will turn you into a millionaire overnight. He teaches just the opposite, he shows the hang-ups to day trading, he shows all the pitfalls and landmines. This book should be a requirement for all beginner day traders. Unfortunately, many beginner day traders think they are advanced. I strongly suggest all degrees of day traders read this book, especially if you have not yet figured out why you can't generate consistent profits.